Friday, October 26, 2007

One new dad and one new mom at the office. New dad asked for a hat for his newborn son. Ravelry helped in the search for cute baby stuff. In my stash I found this handpainted yarn, a gift from Amber in Scotland in the 'one-skein swap'.There was no label, but I think it is 100% wool. And one skein of this yields 2 baby hats.

Tuesday, October 16, 2007

I went to the workshop 'twined knitting' in Amsterdam, given by Carla and Hilly.

This old Swedish knitting technique asks you to do something you normally would avoid knitting with 2 yarns - you have to twist the two strands every stitch. This produces a thick, durable fabric, suitable for mittens and cold weather wear. If you look at the back of the fabric, it almost looks woven.

Carla was a well-prepared teacher, with all kinds of projects to see and touch. After some introduction we could try it out ourselves. It was a real 'hands-on' workshop, with Hilly to assist and help all attendees with their projects. It's an intriguing technique, but very labor intensive. You have to 'untwist' the strands of yarn regularly, before it becomes very messy. You can see pictures of this on Carla's blog. I enjoyed the class, and plan on finishing the small pouch we started !

Thursday, October 11, 2007

Sometimes nice things happen - Carla let me know that a yarn store in Amsterdam also offers courses in 'twined knitting', this weekend. I heard a lot of good things about this store (de afstap), so I decided to go. I love to travel by train, it's a 3 hour train ride, but I don't mind. Looks like DD will get her Swedish mittens after all.

Another surprise - a collegue asked if I could use some sock yarn leftovers. She left a huge bag at my desk. Most is black, grey or brown, and that is perfect for toes-heels for socks for DS. There were also complete balls of brown sock yarn, and I promised her some socks as a repayment. This yarn begs to be knit in nice cabled socks. Any suggestions ?

Tuesday, October 09, 2007

I started the 'hedgerow' socks, in 'storm op zolder' blue faced leicester sock yarn. The pattern is a textured pattern, in knit-purl in a semisolid yarn. I choose color 'Muis' (mouse) a mix of greys, baby blue and cream. Apparently too much contrast to clearly 'read' the pattern in this yarn. And of course, it didn't help that I misread the pattern. Instead of repeating each row twice, I only knitted it once. I frogged this sock - the pattern is not working for this yarn

I also had another setback on my HF Ballerina jacket. You could blame the knitter, but the pattern is also written in a jigsaw-way. (reading back through the pattern, and reversing directions). I increased where I should have decreased, and now I have way too many stitches on my needles. My computer at home crashed, so I cannot show you a picture. And my limited English fails me now to describe what I did wrong. When I have pictures, I will show you.

Final dissappointment - I was looking forward to go to 'Stitch and bitch holland', and participate in several interesting workshops. I went last year, and particulary enjoyed Debbie Stoller and Nancy Marchant. Turns out that this year almost all workshops are fully booked ! Good for the organisation of course, maybe they will have to make a full weekend of it next year ! I am going anyway, and I still managed to enlist for the workshop 'knitting a sock from side to side'. Sounds intriguing. But I really wanted to try 'twined knitting' - I bought a book about it last year in Stockholm, and wanted to knit some mittens in this old Swedish technique for my DD, who started to study Swedish this year.